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The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
231–240 of 482 posts
Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't used the new ones, but I have an Oculus Go. I think the most important part is fitting. I believe there are companies selling accessories to make it more comfortable to wear, and I'd totally invest in that if I planned to use it more, or in a different setting. I'm using it for porn (and it's amazing, VR porn is the most underrated thing imho, but maybe I'm just weird) and for movies (non-3d, having these s…
Watching movies seems like a different application of the tech. Doesn't that just simulate a movie screen several feet in front of you? That's probably not quite as sickness inducing as moving around a full VR environment.
Yes. I mean, if you want to, you can also have a simulated empty cinema around the screen.
I've never felt sick while using it, but I've also only played very few games on it, and those weren't action packed with lots of moving about, but more simple and relaxed.
Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
#233> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…
> You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he was still working for Meta... It's a pretty common sentiment in my experience here, de rigueur even. Expressing it in the way he does here is definitely frowned upon though -- one of the most interesting cultural traits I've noticed that Meta has fostered is an awareness and avoidance of cynicism. When people comment internally…
I felt this way about the entire United States when I moved here from Europe. The standard stance in the UK is cynical, dry, and too-cool-for-school. Try-hards are despised. The US was different and very refreshing. Enthusiasm and optimism can be expressed without embarrassment, and having a too-frequently-cynical stance is looked down on.
I felt a step change again moving from academia to industry, but perhaps it goes a step too far. Sometimes I feel like thoughtful analysis is suppressed in favor of active thrash, because the former smells like bad-valence skepticism and the latter approved optimism.
Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cutting costs is always a marginal thing, because businesses tend to value growth. Oversimplification: If you have a 50% margin business, the value of one more dollar of revenue is $.50. If you cut costs and change the margin to 55%, then you've added only $.05 of revenue to that additional dollar. Now, a sane person will look at the improvements to margin across the whole business and still want to make those improv…
And if you cut costs in a (prospective or current) operating area from 120% of revenue to 90% of revenue, you've opened up an entire new operating area to profitably grow in. Developing the technology to do a thing profitably that previously could not be done profitably is the stuff unicorns are made of.
Absolutely! I hope my reply didn't imply that I thought there was no value in doing things more efficiently. There clearly is, and as consumers we love marginal gains in product quality, efficiency, and price.
I'll nitpick a bit to ask, though, how many times has a new entrant to a market gotten a process/business/tool/etc from 120% operating to 90% through marginal gains? I'd wager almost never. Process improvement can be marginal or stepwise/punctuated. I think most unicorns create punctuated change in ossified industries, but, I don't think any big companies are likely to hire a data scientist and through years of grinding through the margins achieve that 30% improvement.
put differently, the decision to focus on revenue vs profit is a decision that typically does not include the NPV of R&D investments. those are uncertain and have some probabilistic value, but not so much in accounting terms.
Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
#235> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…
> You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he was still working for Meta... It's a pretty common sentiment in my experience here, de rigueur even. Expressing it in the way he does here is definitely frowned upon though -- one of the most interesting cultural traits I've noticed that Meta has fostered is an awareness and avoidance of cynicism. When people comment internally…
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Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
#236As someone not in the topic the metaverse seems even worse, i.e. it looks like Facebook spent 20 Billion and didn't manage to add anything to VR other small companies haven't added years earlier... I'm probably missing something, but it honestly looks worse then burning money, it looks like extremely inefficiently burning money. Anyway sounded like an interesting work before the team was dissolved.
In theory you're missing the network effect of everyone already being on Facebook. So they can quickly spin up a vast virtual world with all the people you know already in it. In practice, it hasn't happened, and nobody seems excited to do it. Whatever benefits they hope to get from the network effect seem unlikely thus far.
Through in my experience no one but old people is actually on facebook. (EDIT: In the country where I live.)
A lot of middle aged people might still have an account because old people and aged contacts but don't really want to use it.
And this scenario still requires most people to have a VR headset which doesn't make them sick and is comfortable and easy to use, which is not just technically still a bit off AFIK but also has tricky problems. Like a lot of people have glasses, including many "non trivial" ones and just the act of needing to replace glasses with contact lenses makes it "annoying" and that is iff you can have contact lenses.
Then it needs to be lightweight, but also fast and to be charged but can't have a large battery and a cable is also annoying and needs high enough frequency/resolution but also cheap and must not get too war either. Also while it needs to be cheap it also must fit all kinds of head sizes and form very well so you kinda both need and must not have a one size fits all solution.
And even if you add all of that up it still holds that for a lot of tasks text/images is still best. I thats why most websites and apps are still "2d" today it's just more practical.
So it's a bit like video calls, but needing a specialized device instead of just your phone/laptop/AIO PC.
So for it to work IMHO you would need to do something like replacing phones with hybrid VR/AR glasses which are technological a jump comparable to the last 10(or more) years. And have hand tracking in the glasses as an camera. And convince most people to run around with glasses all the time (good luck). And convince people that using a facbook controlled device with camera and mic in nearly every part of their live both offline and online.
So it's possible, but especially for Facebook it's hard and I think they went all-in ~5-10 years to early. IMHO Apple has much better chances to take over that space, and if they do it right not limited to Apple users.
Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
#237> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…
> You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he was still working for Meta... It's a pretty common sentiment in my experience here, de rigueur even. Expressing it in the way he does here is definitely frowned upon though -- one of the most interesting cultural traits I've noticed that Meta has fostered is an awareness and avoidance of cynicism. When people comment internally…
>for me it's refreshing.
blink twice if you need help?
Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
#238As someone not in the topic the metaverse seems even worse, i.e. it looks like Facebook spent 20 Billion and didn't manage to add anything to VR other small companies haven't added years earlier... I'm probably missing something, but it honestly looks worse then burning money, it looks like extremely inefficiently burning money. Anyway sounded like an interesting work before the team was dissolved.
Good standalone headsets were a thing before Quest?
depending on your standards, yes
but also very expensive
Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
#239> Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. You can somehow feel that he has been dying to say this for years, but couldn't while he wa…
I see your point and don't mean to be argumentative, but a couple small corrections.
First, the pivot to "meta" was just over a year ago, so it hasn't been quite years.
Second, I haven't been shy about sharing my opinion internally, though I haven't been broadcasting it either. The first thing I said in our team group chat when we'd heard this announcement was (context, I am much older than most people on the team) "I'm old enough to have read Snow Crash the week it came out and IT WAS A DYSTOPIA, why are we building it?"
Third, this opinion is indeed extremely common internally.
Fourth, I genuinely have no idea how this decision was made; it was certainly not on the basis of net cost savings. We did the math.
Re: The last three years of my work will be permanently abandoned
#240> News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”. I could say the same thing about TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, Whatsapp, Youtube, WeChat, etc. I'm not bullish on the metaverse. I live simply, with less tech than the average person. I don't expect to participate. Wit…
There's a difference between you personally not using WhatsApp and you saying "no one wants to use WhatsApp".